by ajb

[I’ve been hard at work on about 20 long form essays over the last year, and am aiming to publish them to the world by 2020. I’ll continue to use this page to update folk with interesting articles, updates on my 2020 writing project and ideas still under development.]

…I was listening to a dialogue between Dr. James Cone and Dr. Cornel West while reading about the aim to put Medicaid expansion on ballots in different states in 2018. And, while I don’t always agree with Cone’s livid Black theological orientation, I was struck by a response he gave to Dr. West, wherein he argued that people yearning for a better world must keep track of both the far-reaching vision they hold deep in their souls for fundamental transformation of existing society and the radical importance of the historical particularities of any given moment in time.

I’m much less interested in ideological battles with my lefty friends or my liberally friends than I am concerned with winning many millions of people to a more progressive and radical politics through concrete, material struggle. Political battles (like the one this article shows the Republicans are salivating to wage against the Medicaid Expansion) are where we can contest for the hearts, minds and souls of the masses of people needed for fundamental transformation.

I feel like it’s becoming increasingly apparent that sections of the ruling class, that is, those sections that have pledged allegiance to right wing visions of regression and restoration in order to violently triple down on racial, sexual, gendered and national hierarchies, ought be defeated in this moment. I think the 2016 electoral coup shows (without much need for doubt) that the most reactionary sections of organized capital have shown a political fondness for using the Republican party as an instrument for its own tyrannical rule. Meanwhile, the Democrats only continue to survive as a party because of their massive donor base, the obvious insidiousness of their Republican opposition, and the growing multiracial working class movements that have few electoral options in terms of putting our people in government. Ultimately, it’s up to us, as people who yearn and struggle for a better world, to unite the broadest possible social forces against the narrowest of targets.

Medicaid is a federal/state program that subsidizes healthcare costs for people who are at 133% of the federal poverty line. In short, this means many millions of poor and working class people in the United States have gained what amounts to free coverage under the expansion of Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. This is NOT universal healthcare, nor is it fully socialized. But it is a program won through specific political struggle that is giving working class people access to healthcare, and thats very important.
One of my loved ones is on Medicaid. I pray that the Republicans decisively fail at attempting to forcibly move millions of people even further away from adequate health care, and I will organize to help make that prayer a material reality, and I will never, ever stop praying and organizing and yearning for Black liberation…

It was a bright and sunny morning long ago. I woke up, wiped the crust out my eyes, and regrettably reached for my phone, only to find this picture on my twitter feed. Between that, this, and this, ya’ll knew DeRay was about to get a note.